In a recently surfaced clip reportedly recorded during the making of his 2011 concert documentary, Never Say Never, a young Justin Bieber, said to be 15 at the time, tells a racist joke and repeats the N-word several times.
“Why are black people afraid of chain saws?” His punchline, repeatedly saying, “Run N****r.”
According to British site The Sun, Justin’s camp knew about the existence of the footage and was willing to pay to keep it from surfacing.
TMZ claims it had the clip years ago but declined to post it because of Justin’s age and his team (not included in the clip). A source says that Justin is currently “frustrated and sad” and plans to apologize and address the clip publicly within the next day or so.
Justin’s ex-bodyguard says the 5-year old video of Justin telling a joke using the n-word multiple times does NOT make him a racist … just a bad joke-teller.
Kenny Hamilton tweeted:
We all make jokes about people’s size, look, or race. That doesn’t mean it’s right but comedians make millions of dollars profiting off… of these jokes. If someone is racist or prejudice you would know from a persons actions. Not because of a joke a 15 year old says.
What I do know whole heartedly is @justinbieber is not prejudice nor is he racist. He wasn’t raised that way and his family isn’t either.
Yes he said some bad jokes and I know if he could he would take back what was said. He’s grown a lot in 5 years and as we all grow we learn.
He will always be criticized and judged every day of his life by people who only know him because of blogs or the press. That won’t change.
As a black man I am telling the world that @justinbieber is not a racist. I have known him since he was 12 years old and I know his heart.
Justin apologizes, telling TMZ:
As a kid, I didn’t understand the power of certain words and how they can hurt. I thought it was ok to repeat hurtful words and jokes, but didn’t realize at the time that it wasn’t funny and that in fact my actions were continuing the ignorance.
Thanks to friends and family I learned from my mistakes and grew up and apologized for those wrongs. Now that these mistakes from the past have become public I need to apologize again to all those I have offended.
I’m very sorry. I take my friendships with people of all cultures very seriously and I apologize for offending or hurting anyone with my childish and inexcusable mistake. I was a kid then and I am a man now who knows my responsibility to the world and to not make that mistake again.
Ignorance has no place in our society and I hope the sharing of my faults can prevent others from making the same mistake in the future. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say but telling the truth is always what’s right.
Five years ago I made a reckless and immature mistake and I’m grateful to those close to me who helped me learn those lessons as a young man. Once again….I’m sorry.
People are always blowing shit out of proportion, hes not the first to make a joke and he wont be the last. He apologies for making a terrible joke that he thought was kind of funny when he was 15, that is not the same person he is right now, he's grown and realised that such language is inappropriate because some people may get offended. It's kind of surprising if you ask me, I hear so many people use that word right now, regardless of their culture, whether they are black, white, Asian, Hispanic, its doesn't matter, so many people use it, it doesn't have the same meaning that it did 60 -70 years ago. And people should try to understand that. And I agree with Kenny, that we all make fun or other people, according to their sizes, ethnicity, etc, you name it, and this just happens to be one of those cases where it happened to be recorded, but people around do it all the time too, so why are people so quick to judge when they are not innocent themselves?
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